Cape Breton Road

At nineteen, Innis Corbett is transplanted from his home near Boston and suddenly finds himself back in the remote Cape Breton community where he was born, the reluctant and unwelcome guest of his uncle Starr. Innis had developed an addiction for stealing expensive cars (not for money but for pleasure) and for the marijuana he helps his best friend to sell. When bad habits catch up with him, he is deported to Canada, a punishment worse than prison.

Innis is unimpressed by his uncle, who gave up his dreams of leaving the island to repair televisions, chase women, drive a Lada and grow nostalgic on rum. Desperate to get away, Innis hatches the only escape plan he can, and starts to grow a secret cash crop of marijuana and looks for a car to steal. He bides his time smoking pot and doing whatever odd jobs he has to, full of unnamed need and pent-up anger. When Starr’s current girlfriend, an attractive woman in her late thirties, comes to stay while fleeing another relationship, Innis’ deep sense of longing fixes on her. He feels fierce desire, but also something he recognises as good and true. Starr cautions him, and a bitter jealous rivalry begins to rage between them, violence lying just under the surface. As summer arrives, Innis’ suffocation and the tension between the two men are palpable.

Though life in this small community bound by memory and blood cannot cure Innis immediately of his anger, the rugged landscape does work a change on him. He takes on the challenge of the wild and harsh north woods where a man can get lost, learns the names of plants and wildlife, sketches and studies the natural world, and diligently cares for his illegal seedlings. As he grows stronger, he faces himself in the mirror and feels an emerging sense of self-worth and coming manhood. He realises he is learning an enjoyment of hard work and its rewards, although his crop might be less worthy than those of his predecessors. Affectionately sheltering the plants from bad weather and hungry deer, he muses, “Was there a Gaelic word for pot?”

Cape Breton has spawned a wealth of contemporary literature, from Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees to Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief and Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven. The region’s rugged landscapes, rural life and distinctive Gaelic traditions converging with modern social pressures have captured the attention of readers internationally; as they have in the work of other Atlantic Canada authors such as Michael Crummey, Wayne Johnston and David Adams Richards. MacDonald set his novel in the 1970s, when a country area of Cape Breton could still be a truly isolated backwater, the phone service on a party-line system and listening-in a regular pastime. “I needed to create a world that was much more cut off, where it would seem like exile to Innis and where he could never be alone or anonymous.”

Innis recalls his parents’ fights about “down home”, how they would one day love it to tears and the next day complain how it had held them back. Much as he wants to get off the Cape Breton Road, it may be that all the emotions that make life worth living — “love and anger and disappointment and hope” — lead back to the island. Cape Breton Road is a compelling coming-of-age story raw with beauty and emotion.